What do Elections and Careers have in Common?

Now, I know there are two things we are
not “supposed” to discuss -politics and sex. However, I
am a bit of a political junkie. While you may not agree
with the politicians themselves, the principles they use
to get elected can be learned from (at least the ethical
ones!)

I just watched an interesting documentary on the
campaign for the 2002 election. The politicians hired
GCS consultants to help them with their messaging,
polling, and strategy. The “C” in GCS stands for James
Carvelle. Does that name sound familiar? It may very
well, as he was the architect of the Clinton win in
1992.

Since that time, James has worked on elections around
the world with campaigns in wide ranging countries
such as Ireland and Russia. His team has developed a
methodology that can be applied to any election in any
country around the world. The principles are universal,
even though the issues are local.

To get the win for Goni (the candidate whom they were
working for), for example, Carvelle’s team had to
determine what the big issues were for the population
of Bolivia. They then continually tweaked their campaign
message to best expose the weaknesses of their
opponents, and position Goni as the people’s best
choice for leading Bolivia.

Carvelle’s team employed tools consisting of polls,
focus groups, and advertisements. They used a
scientific process to gather data, and then brought in
James (the big gun!) to interpret the data, provide
input on a strategy, and guide their candidate along
the trail to winning the election. Their message was“The Brand of Crisis: our experience is what you
need” (at that time, Bolivia was undergoing
tremendous challenges).

4 principles:

Find the needs of the market

Get your message in tune with the needs

Clarify and repeat your message as often as
possible

Tweak when necessary

CareerJoy has the tools and experience to help our
clients with all four principles so that they too can
win. Write to us if you’re interested in having an
experienced team in your corner ( jenny@careerjoy.com ).